The East Comes Onshore?

There are signs that the offshoring market has 'matured'; it's slowing down a bit. There's even been a small turn of the tide with India's biggest back office operator, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) doing a deal in October 2005 with insurance company, Pearl, which involves the workers staying put in Petersborough. TCS hope to do similar deals all over Europe.

However, offshoring continues with even the BBC announcing in October 2006 that it has signed a 10 year deal with Xansa to handle BBC finances. Xansa is a UK-based company which has around 8,000 employess in the UK and India.

There has been some rethinking of offshoring by UK companies because of negative customer reaction. Joint UK / India arrangements are increasingly common. In the global village of the 21st century it is now possible for Indian call centre operatives to deal with the straight forward questions from customers and to hand over to UK operatives if the answers needed become more complex.

Offshoring will continue. The Brighton & Hove Economic Partnership is concerned about possible negative impacts on the local economy, and has commissioned research into the matter.

If free market global capitalism works, then eventually more Indian global companies, like TCS, will want to invest in the UK. However, it would be foolish to imagine that offshoring will only ever involve call centre jobs.

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In fact, in 2005 Indian investment in the UK across the piece exceeded for the first time, UK investment in India.